James 2:26 “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
As we have seen in the previous section, one of the main functions of the human spirit is to impart life, for it was only after God breathed His breath of life into the body of Adam that he became a living being. This truth agrees with what the apostle James wrote about our spirits and our physical bodies, for in the above quoted passage of scripture he teaches us that the physical body of man requires a spirit to reside on the inside of that body in order for the body to be able to live. In other words when the spirit of man is inside the body the body is alive, but when the spirit leaves the body then the physical body dies. I want you to notice that all the body of man requires in order to live is to have a human spirit living on the inside. The condition of that spirit does not determine whether the body lives or not, but rather it is purely the presence of the spirit that determines whether the body lives or not. The reason I mention that is because as we will see in this teaching, the spirits of men have two distinct conditions.
2 Peter 1:3-4 “as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, (4) by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
Another role that the human spirit plays is in determining the nature of the man. In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Peter teaches us that as believers that we have become partakers of the divine nature. In other words believer’s spirits have the nature of God because they are born of God. To contrast that statement we can look at what the Lord Jesus taught about the condition of the spirits of unbelievers, when He said that they were of their father the devil, and the desires of their father they wanted to do (John 8:44). Clearly scripture teaches us that it is the spirit of the man that determines the true nature of the man.
Michael E.B. Maher
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